On the radio Saturday, I heard something fantastic. According to 100.1 FM, it is legal in Hong Kong for a woman to kill her cheating husband, as long as she uses no weapon but her bare hands. However, she may legally kill the other woman without any such restriction!
This is amazing on a couple of levels. As my wife points out, this gives the cheater better odds of survival than the mistress (assuming it is more difficult, emotionally and physically, to kill with your bare hands). How the hell is that sensible? The cheater is the one who did the greater wrong, ja? Assuming that he promised to be sexually exclusive with his wife, he broke his promise and betrayed her trust. The mistress screwed someone she shouldn't have, but she broke no promise, and betrayed no trust (that we know of).
The other crazy thing is that it's obviously accepted that murdering a cheating spouse or a mistress is an acceptable way of dealing with the situation! I can't get over such a complete acceptance of jealousy and vengeance.
I mean, isn't jealousy something that we should discourage? It's one of the top 7 sins, according to some, and I think that everyone would agree that it's harmful. I'm not even touching the whole issue of revenge.
In America, monogamy is the default - as in programming, it's what happens if no action is taken to alter or prevent it. Since most of the marriages in my family ended in part because of problems of infidelity, I've never been willing to accept monogamy uncritically. It obviously just does not work for everybody. I think it could work much better, though, if more people examined what it meant to them and their partners openly and honestly. If one of you can't handle your partner having friends of whatever gender, or talking to them, flirting with them, having sex with them, etc., and your partner does not know where those boundaries are, they may have very different ideas of what's acceptable. Even if you both have the best of intentions, you can be undone by those unknowns.
When my wife and I first started dating seriously, I told her how I felt about this whole idea. I care about honesty and trust more than anything else, and I saw no need for an exclusive relationship. She did, so I agreed to respect that. Since we defined our relationship together, we've been able to be really open with each other about what we want and how we feel. When we were engaged, we were both comfortable with making it an 'open' marriage (we did not have traditional vows). While it has been complicated at times, we've been able to almost completely avoid the problems of jealousy by communicating openly with each other. It takes a lot of trust, but it also makes a lot of trust.
So, while my wife and I have slept with other people, we've never interfered with anyone else's relationship. We don't want to help wreck whatever they've built.
I don't wish everyone had the same arrangement we do, but I do wish more people would seriously consider what works for them, and choose for themselves.
This is amazing on a couple of levels. As my wife points out, this gives the cheater better odds of survival than the mistress (assuming it is more difficult, emotionally and physically, to kill with your bare hands). How the hell is that sensible? The cheater is the one who did the greater wrong, ja? Assuming that he promised to be sexually exclusive with his wife, he broke his promise and betrayed her trust. The mistress screwed someone she shouldn't have, but she broke no promise, and betrayed no trust (that we know of).
The other crazy thing is that it's obviously accepted that murdering a cheating spouse or a mistress is an acceptable way of dealing with the situation! I can't get over such a complete acceptance of jealousy and vengeance.
I mean, isn't jealousy something that we should discourage? It's one of the top 7 sins, according to some, and I think that everyone would agree that it's harmful. I'm not even touching the whole issue of revenge.
In America, monogamy is the default - as in programming, it's what happens if no action is taken to alter or prevent it. Since most of the marriages in my family ended in part because of problems of infidelity, I've never been willing to accept monogamy uncritically. It obviously just does not work for everybody. I think it could work much better, though, if more people examined what it meant to them and their partners openly and honestly. If one of you can't handle your partner having friends of whatever gender, or talking to them, flirting with them, having sex with them, etc., and your partner does not know where those boundaries are, they may have very different ideas of what's acceptable. Even if you both have the best of intentions, you can be undone by those unknowns.
When my wife and I first started dating seriously, I told her how I felt about this whole idea. I care about honesty and trust more than anything else, and I saw no need for an exclusive relationship. She did, so I agreed to respect that. Since we defined our relationship together, we've been able to be really open with each other about what we want and how we feel. When we were engaged, we were both comfortable with making it an 'open' marriage (we did not have traditional vows). While it has been complicated at times, we've been able to almost completely avoid the problems of jealousy by communicating openly with each other. It takes a lot of trust, but it also makes a lot of trust.
So, while my wife and I have slept with other people, we've never interfered with anyone else's relationship. We don't want to help wreck whatever they've built.
I don't wish everyone had the same arrangement we do, but I do wish more people would seriously consider what works for them, and choose for themselves.